Topics

Accessibility

Visual Studio Code has many features to help make the editor accessible to all users. Zoom and High Contrast colors improve editor visibility, keyboard-only navigation allows use without a mouse and the editor has been optimized for screen readers.

Zoom

You can increase the Zoom level in VS Code with the View > Zoom In command (⌘= (Windows, Linux Ctrl+=)). The zoom level increases by 20% each time the command is executed. The View > Zoom Out (⌘- (Windows, Linux Ctrl+-)) command lets you decrease the Zoom level.

Persisted Zoom Level

When you adjust the zoom level with the View > Zoom In / Out commands, the zoom level is persisted in the window.zoomLevelsetting. The default value is 0 and each increment increases the zoom level by 20%.

High Contrast Theme

We support a High Contrast color theme on all platforms. Use File > Preferences > Color Theme to display the Select Color Theme drop-down and select the High Contrast theme.

Keyboard Navigation

You will find that VS Code provides an exhaustive list of commands in the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) so that you can run VS Code without using the mouse. Press ⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P) then type a command name (e.g. 'git') to filter the list of commands.

VS Code also has many preset keyboard shortcuts for commands. These are displayed to the right of the command in the Command Palette.

You can also set your own keyboard shortcuts. File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts brings up the Default Keyboard Shortcuts in the left pane and your customizable keybindings.json on the right. See Key Bindings for more details on customizing or adding your own keyboard shortcuts.

Tab Navigation

You can use the Tab key to jump between VS Code UI controls. Use Shift+Tab to tab in reverse order. As you tab through the UI controls, you can see an indicator around the UI element once the element gains focus.

Some areas that support Tab navigation are:

The View switcher (Files, Search, Git, Debug)

The header of collapsible sections in a view to expand/collapse

Actions in views and sections

Actions for items in the tree

Tab trapping

By default, pressing the Tab within a source code file inserts the Tab character (or spaces depending on your Indentation setting) and does not leave the open file. You can toggle the trapping of Tab with ⌃⇧M (Windows, Linux Ctrl+M) and subsequent Tab keys will move focus out of the file. When default Tab trapping is off, you will see an indicator in the Status Bar.

You can also toggle Tab trapping from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) with the Toggle Use of Tab Key for Setting Focus action.

Read-only files never trap the Tab key. The Integrated Terminal panel respects the Tab trapping mode and can be toggled with ⌃⇧M (Windows, Linux Ctrl+M).

Screen Readers

VS Code supports screen readers in the editor using a strategy based on paging the text. We have tested using the NVDA screen reader, but we expect all screen readers to benefit from this support.

When the suggestions pop up, they will get announced to screen readers. It is possible to navigate the suggestions using Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down, you can dismiss the suggestions with Shift+Escape and if suggestions get in your way, you can disable the auto-popup of suggestions with the editor.quickSuggestions setting.

The Go to Next/Previous Difference actions (F7 and Shift+F7), when in a diff editor pane, will bring up the Diff Review Pane, which allows the navigation of the diffs, presented in a unified patch format. Arrow Up and Arrow Down can be used to navigate through the unchanged, inserted or deleted lines. Pressing Enter will return focus to the modified pane of the diff editor at the selected line number (or closest still existing line number in case a deleted line is selected). Use Escape or Shift+Escape to dismiss the Diff Review Pane.

Accessibility Help

You can press ⌥F1 (Windows, Linux Alt+F1) to trigger the Show Accessibility Help dialog while in an editor to check the state of various accessibility options in VS Code:

Debugger Accessibility

The VS Code debugger UI is user accessible and has the following features:

Changes in debug state are read out (e.g. 'started', 'breakpoint hit', 'terminated', ...).